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Alfredo Climaco, the owner of the new Latin American cocktail bar Tropicale, has died of complications from the coronavirus. Climaco had just opened Tropicale, its first brick and mortar bar, last year. He was 32 years old.
Climaco was born and raised in Puebla, Mexico, where he developed a love for bartending and service. In a conversation in August, he recalled his memories of consuming piña coladas in hollowed out pineapples as a teenager, which became one of his iconic drinks as a bar owner and bartender. He started working in a nightclub at age 17, where he learned the basics of bartending. “I have fallen in love with certain aspects of the service industry,” he said in August. “I love how rewarding it is to make people happy.”
He moved to the United States in 2010, hoping to someday own his own business. He took business classes at Portland Community College and eventually began making alcohol-free piña coladas, served in pineapples, at outdoor events like the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival. The success of his pop-ups gave him the motivation to open Tropicale with restaurateur Matt Lynch in the summer of 2020.
The bar, in the Ocean building on NE Glisan, quickly became a hotspot. People were drawn to Climaco’s warmth and its vibrant drinks, from margaritas inspired by Pueblan dishes to frozen drinks poured into blenders. Tables scattered around the outdoor patio filled up on weekend evenings, and sometimes people danced on the patio stones outside the bar. Climaco had started working on a take-out cocktail menu in December, eager to be able to recruit some of its employees. “I’m not trying to make a profit right now, I’m just trying to go in the same direction,” he said in December. “In the frost, it really hurt my heart to say to people, ‘Okay, you can’t work.'”
For those who knew him, Climaco was seen as gregarious, incredibly hardworking and generous. Her family and colleagues organized a GoFundMe to cover her funeral and medical expenses; the excess funds will go to the Portland Mercado, which supported Climaco in launching its business. Tropicale will be closed today, and likely for the rest of the week as family and co-workers mourn.
• In memory of Alfredo Climaco [GFM]
• There’s a new place to drink piña coladas with hollowed out pineapples [EPDX]
• For some Portland bar owners, take-out cocktail legislation seems too little, too late [EPDX]
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